AS9100 Auditor Says to Change Our Scope???

[Randy]

I'm curious as to how much all this "PEAR" stuff has improved the aerospace quality process on the whole?

 

[Mike S.]

I'm curious as to how much all this "PEAR" stuff has improved the aerospace quality process on the whole?

Amen! The i/o, interaction of processes and PEARs documentation are a headache that (IMO) auditors that have no real manufacturing knowledge seem to focus on heavily, but once the audit is over, almost no one pays any attention to that stuff. One auditor will look at it and say its fine, another will say something is missing.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

The insanity of how the AS auditors have been dealing with PEARs is something that I have voiced here many times. AS9100D Process Matrix for a small cnc machine shop

The IAQG pretends the problem doesn’t exist because to address it would be hard. The concept of the PEAR makes sense. The execution in practice is pathetic.

 

[Randy]

Amen! The i/o, interaction of processes and PEARs documentation are a headache that (IMO) auditors that have no real manufacturing knowledge seem to focus on heavily, but once the audit is over, almost no one pays any attention to that stuff. One auditor will look at it and say its fine, another will say something is missing.

Most of the 9100 auditors I've met wouldn't know the difference between a blind, cherry, solid, button head or flat rivet, and they'd be totally lost with the words weight, arm, moment and what they are for.

 

[Sidney Vianna]

Most of the 9100 auditors I've met wouldn't know the difference between a blind, cherry, solid, button head or flat rivet, and they'd be totally lost with the words weight, arm, moment and what they are for.

That is not surprising because those issues are totally irrelevant for the body of knowledge and competence of aerospace auditors.

 

[AllTheThings]

I remember in annual training sometime in the last five years or so that it was strongly recommended that industry specific scope statements were not appropriate. There were a lot of comments against it from the audience. It does make me wonder if there was some comments or even pressure from bodies above us to make this so. I was among the objectors. I have not run into this since.

Coming from 17025 land (Not AS9100), I've had an assessor state that industry scope statements are mainly just for marketing purposes...Include it as a way to make customer feel comfortable with how the scope then applies to them.

 

[Randy]

That is not surprising because those issues are totally irrelevant for the body of knowledge and competence of aerospace auditors.

As frequently happens you missed the point.

 

[Big Jim]

That is not surprising because those issues are totally irrelevant for the body of knowledge and competence of aerospace auditors.

At the time PEARs were introduced they said it was to provide structure to a process based audit in aerospace and wean them off from the old element based checklist, which was actually even worse. ISO 9001 had already switched to process based auditing and as usual, made it way overcomplicated. The real heart of the PEAR was what are the auditees methods of determining the performance of their processes and are they meeting their expectations. This could have been handled with a one page form similar to what some certification bodies use in their audit workbooks for ISO 9001.

I'm tempted to mention Turtles, but I won't.

 

[Mikishots]

Most of the 9100 auditors I've met wouldn't know the difference between a blind, cherry, solid, button head or flat rivet, and they'd be totally lost with the words weight, arm, moment and what they are for.

That's a good thing. The process is what's important, not things like the differences between epoxy or water-borne paints.

 

[AmandaMusser]

Interestingly enough, I just looked at last year's audit report and found that he also gave us a strongly worded suggestion to shorten our AS9100 certificate scope statement to something like “The contract manufacturing and test of circuit board assemblies and product integration”.